Sadio Mané: ‘I wanted to build a hospital to give people hope’ | Football

Of all the remarkable stories in the new documentary about Sadio Mané, there is one that stands out. From childhood memories of using a grapefruit as a ball in the remote village of Bambali to Liverpool’s Champions League triumph in 2019, Made in Senegal features Mané narrating his rags-to-riches story and includes interviews with Jürgen Klopp and several of his Anfield teammates including Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk. Yet Mané’s recollection of the day his father died is undoubtedly its most poignant moment.

“I was seven years old,” he says in the film. “We were about to play on the field when a cousin approached me and said: ‘Sadio, your father passed away.’ I replied: ‘Oh really? He’s joking …’ I couldn’t really understand it.”

“Before he passed away, he had this kind of sickness for weeks,” Mané tells the Guardian. “We brought him some traditional medicine and it kept him calm for three or four months. The sickness came back but this time the medicine didn’t work and because there was no hospital in Bambali they had to take him to the next village to see if they could save his life. But it was not the case.

“When I was young my dad was always saying how proud he was of me,” he adds. “He was a man with a big heart. When he died, it had a big impact on me and the rest of my family. I said to myself: ‘Now I have to do my best to help my mother.’ That’s a hard thing to deal with when you are so young.”

Two decades on, a hospital funded solely by Mané is due to open in around six months’ time to go with the school he built in his home village last year and he says the circumstances surrounding his father’s death are a major reason for his philanthropy in Sédhiou province, where the World Bank estimates almost 70% of families live in poverty. “I remember my sister was also born at home because there is no hospital in our village. It was a really, really sad situation for everyone. I wanted to build one to give people hope.”

Mané’s father was an imam and the family gather every year on the anniversary of his death to recite the Qur’an. Having failed to convince his family to allow him to abandon his education so he could pursue his ambition of becoming a professional footballer, Mané ran away from home at the age of 15 with the help of a childhood friend Luc Djiboune.

“It was tough because I didn’t have anyone behind me to push me to achieve my dream,” he says. “But I never stopped dreaming. It was really brave to leave my family in the village and go to Dakar but I knew that I could be successful. After that, my family started to take it more seriously and knew that I didn’t want to do anything else. They knew they had no choice so they helped me.”

It was at the Generation Foot academy in the Senegal capital, Dakar, that Mané’s journey to stardom really began after he scored four goals during a trial match. “I think they were impressed,” he says in the film. Under the watchful eye of founder Mady Touré, whom Mané describes as “like a dad to me”, he was snapped up by the French club Metz at the start of 2011 and moved to the Austrian side Red Bull Salzburg 18 months later having played a key role in Senegal’s run to the quarter-finals of the 2012 Olympics.

Klopp remembers passing up the chance to sign him for Borussia Dortmund in 2014 having made a judgment based on the way he was wearing his baseball cap.

“He said I was like a rapper!” Mané says, chuckling at the memory. “But I think I gave my best so what can I say? That’s part of life – you never know how you are going to get along with people. But I think he was wrong for sure. It was an experience for me as well though. I knew I had to show him more until we met again …”

“What makes him special is that he never stops believing,” he says now. “In the meeting before the game he was really convinced that we could do it. Even though we were missing two of the best players in the world [Salah and Roberto Firmino]. He pushed the boys hard to give everything possible and tried to take the pressure off us.”

The dressing room celebrations after Liverpool’s victory over Tottenham in Madrid make for entertaining viewing but that is nothing compared with the reception Mané receives on his return to Bambali. Walking around the village surrounded by jubilant fans, he recognises an old lady and asks why she hasn’t returned his phone calls?

“You’d call me if you missed me,” he says. “I gave you my number.”

“I haven’t got a phone,” comes the reply, much to Mané’s amusement.

His naturally cheerful demeanour and humbleness shine throughout the documentary, especially when he addresses a crowd of youths outside the new school and tells them “education is the key”. “School comes first,” he says. “You should be in good health before you go to work, so let’s finish the hospital.”

“When you see these kind of people and the offerings in front of the house, you think: ‘Wow, I have to work even harder for them,” says Mané, who has also contributed £40,000 to the Senegal government to help fight coronavirus.

“Maybe if there had been a better school when I was younger maybe I could have studied more. But it was not the case – I was in the village. So all the boys there want to play football and no one wants to go to school any more. They just want to be a footballer like me … But I always tell them to make sure they have to be well educated and go to school. Of course they can keep playing football but it will help you more to be successful in what you are doing if you do both. It’s not like when I was young any more because it was very difficult back then.”